Attributions

The idea for our project, degrading fatbergs, was generated by one of our team members, Miguel, during one of our meetings. Our team then did research in the literature to determine what genes might be able to break down fats. Our mentors from FREDsense Technologies, Emily and Robert, helped us find relevant papers, identify our EstA gene and eventually design our genetic circuit, which we had synthesized by BioBasic.

Our project was made possible by help from a variety of different sources:

- Funding from geekStarter/Mindfuel (with support from Anonymous Donor, RBC, Motorola Solutions Foundation, and NSERC/CRSNG), Knights of Columbus High River, Catholic Womens League High River, Cargill High River, and Co-op High River. This allowed us to purchase our genetic circuit, purchase lab reagents and equipment as well as travel to places such as aGEM 2018, and by the end of October, iGEM 2018.

- Throughout the process, our mentors, FREDsense’s Emily and Robert, were invaluable in helping us with the execution and design of different lab procedures as well as providing us with advice which helped moved our project forward. In addition to this, Robert taught us modelling and provided the idea of testing our bacteria using Nitrophenol so that we could use a spectrophotometer to quantitatively model the reaction and use those values for our model. Without Emily, we would not have successfully inserted our gene into the proper pSB1C3 backbone to submit our new part into the registry in time.

- We met with Jason Craigie and Eugene Lund at the Town of High River a couple of times to see how valuable our bacteria would be and how best it could be used to help them. They helped to explain how the waste water system works in our town, gave us a tour, and helped us brainstorm where our bacteria could be used in their system.

- We also met with Sean Murray and Dale Lagrange at Cargill (a local meat processing plant) to talk about how they dealt with fat removal in their waste water system and how/where our bacteria might be used.

- During aGEM (Alberta iGEM preparation competition hosted by MindFuel), we were able to gain valuable responses from the judges and other participants, which helped us prepare for iGEM. It was also during aGEM that we were able to contact Amino Labs and University of Calgary iGEM team who are helping us to improve our presentation.

- Cassie Sillner, Jacob Grainger, Christian Emond, and Lalit Bharadwaj from the University of Calgary iGEM team helped us conduct testing with their spectrophotometer. Rainer Lim helped us in designing a logo and other graphic design aspects of our project.

- Julie Legault and Justin Pahara of Amino Labs approached us and invited us to their site to present for them and get feedback on our presentation prior to iGEM, and asked to partner with us to design our own Amino Lab kit. We are currently in the feasibility study phase.

- Patrick Wu gave us valuable feedback on our project, and helped us with different wiki problems we had.

- George Dearing helped us with notarizing travel documents for iGEM.

- Jayden Henderson took photographs of our team members for this wiki.

- Norm Durieux, a local retired electrical engineer helped us to create our own incubator using Christmas lights and a plastic container.

The above photo is our DIY incubator, made using a plastic bin, incandescent Christmas lights, oven thermometer, and a fan.